SteelSeries Diablo III Headset review

Great sound, shame about the cable

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For

Looks good

Very good sound quality

Good recording quality

Against

Expensive

Very short cable

Continuing the pre-emptive celebrations of a future Diablo 3 launch, SteelSeries has followed up its rather good SteelSeries Diablo III Mouse with the Diablo III Headset, in anticipation of the new game.

While we were surprised to see a tie-in product launched so far in advance of the product its accompanying, the SteelSeries Diablo III Mouse cast aside any of our doubts, by being a thoroughly decent gaming mouse.

It looks fantastic, and has much more subtle Diablo III branding than the mouse, so even if you weren't interested in the game, you'd still be happy to wear these.

They're comfortable to wear, which is always a must for gaming headsets where you're going to be using them for long periods. And sound quality is very good.

The pull-out microphone is discrete, yet picks up voices very well, while keeping ambient sounds to a minimum. So far so good then, so why are we hesitating from fully recommending this headset?

We're not entirely happy with the SteelSeries Diablo III Headset because of the baffling design choice of having such a short cable length of just one metre. This means that even when plugged into the front USB port of your PC, you end up leaning over the keyboard. And if you only have USB ports around the back of your PC then forget about it, the SteelSeries Diablo III Headset just won't reach.

Verdict

With a longer cable we'd say this was an excellent headset. But hobbled by its short reach, we just can't recommend it.

Update:SteelSeries have been in touch and our sample should have come with a much longer cable. When it turns up, we'll test it out and update this review.